Free Spooner by Pete Dexter Page A

tools in a box in the trunk of his
     car, everything exactly in its place, and before he started he always changed into work clothes that smelled like work, hanging
     his clean pants and shirt on the bathroom door. Sometimes he let Spooner saw a little bit or hammer a nail, but he stayed
     close and ready to intervene, and Spooner saw that it made him nervous not to be the one holding the tools.
    Afterwards, when he’d finished what he’d started and put away his tools and taken a bath if he’d gotten dirty, and Spooner
     and Margaret and Spooner’s grandmother had been sent off to bed, he and Spooner’s mother would sit together in the kitchen,
     talking and listening to the radio. Sometimes Calmer had a glass of crackers and milk. As for giggling and wrestling, like
     Mr. and Mrs. Durkin when Mr. Durkin brought home the cheese, Spooner never heard it. He had a spot near the heating vent where
     he could lie after Margaret went to sleep and hear them as if he were in the kitchen himself, and he never heard anything
     playful going on and did not expect to. Spooner was fairly sure that people like his mother and Calmer had more important
     things on their minds.

    In spite of all the time he was putting in, Calmer was still not much relaxed and comfortable when he came over, particularly
     in the vicinity of Spooner’s grandmother, who watched him like she watched the maid around loose change, and under her roof
     Calmer was always on his feet, possibly to keep himself a moving target. He opened doors and carried groceries and painted
     most of the inside of the house. He fixed every leak in the plumbing, every leak on the roof. He took a loose tooth out of
     Margaret’s mouth, and read the poems she wrote, and before very long she was spending more time with him than Spooner’s mother
     was. Margaret was a conversationalist in those days, full of questions, and Calmer had not gotten over the surprise of her
     yet, all the things she knew, the intelligence of her questions. She had her own diary, and sometimes they sat on the davenport
     together, Margaret and Calmer, and she read to him what she’d written, looking up to check his face when she came to the important
     parts. She cooked him soup and made her finger bleed trying to sew a button back on his uniform shirt. She’d been hugging
     him when he came in the door since the second or third week, and Spooner watched from a doorway, sucking his fingers, wishing
     he could hug him too.
    Sometimes Calmer took Margaret and Spooner with him downtown on errands, or to his office at the school, and one night they
     went out to the football field to look at the eclipse of the moon through the school’s telescope. Margaret knew the names
     of all the constellations. On weekends, he made popcorn and sat with them in the backyard, playing a game called Numbers.
     He would write down four numbers and leave a space for the fifth, and he and Margaret had to guess what came next and explain
     the rule the numbers were following. He took them for ice cream and to the drugstore for grilled cheese sandwiches. Spooner
     would eat some and stick the rest in his pocket when Calmer wasn’t looking and give it either to the Shakers’ coonhound or
     the old one-legged colored boy who came through Vincent Heights once in a while looking into garbage cans—either one of them
     would eat anything.
    The first time they’d gone to the drugstore for grilled cheese sandwiches, Margaret had taken Calmer’s hand on the way back
     to the car. She was eighteen months older than Spooner was, half a foot taller, twice as fast, twice as smart, and as far
     as he knew had been born knowing how to read. And pretty, even Spooner could see that she was pretty. Without knowing he was
     doing it, Spooner reached for a hand too, and got Calmer’s little finger instead, and they walked that way to the end of the
     block, and then Calmer stopped and gently pried him loose.
    “Men don’t hold